


While One Still Had Hope

by Nokomis



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, post resurrection pre-lazarus pit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: “Sometimes I miss things I can’t remember, too.”





	While One Still Had Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://nokomis305.livejournal.com/115601.html). Set during Jason's post-resurrection wanderings around Gotham before he took a dip in the Lazarus pit.

“My sister said we would be friends.”

He froze. He didn’t think that he knew this tiny girl who looked at him like she understood. (Not that he knew much. He thought his name was Jason, and that this was his city, but... things were hazy. And confused.)

“Well, I think she thought we’d be friends, not that she knew we’d be friends. Are you always muddy?”

He shook his head, then stopped, and nodded. He might. He thought he remembered digging his way out of his grave, and he’d been muddy then, too. It was confusing, and he thought probably he hadn’t been in a grave - he didn’t feel dead, dead was supposed to be more peaceful than this - but his answer didn’t matter, because she was skipping through the alley as though he ought to follow her.

“Don’t you want to play with me?” She sounded young, younger than she looked, younger than the sharpness in her eyes. He didn’t want to be alone, so he followed after her, stumbling a bit.

“It’s neat that you met my sister and are still here, because, you know, most people either meet her or don’t meet her. It’s special and I think nice when you get to be both.” She had a parrot, and it protested as she gave it a hug. “She didn’t know why you got to be here again, but our oldest brother *does* but he’s not saying.”

She stopped outside a fast food restaurant, and traced the letters on the window with her fingers, then her toes, bouncing on one foot. She let the parrot loose, and it flew into the sky, red and yellow and, he thought, familiar. “Do you have a name?”

He’d had two, once, but he wasn’t sure. He thought it might be Jason, and something else, something important. Something he wanted and didn’t want to remember all at the same time.

She kept looking at him, with her colorful hair falling into her mismatched eyes, and she touched his forehead once, just like she had with the window, and said, “I’ve had two names, too. I had to stop being one because I became the other. Did you?”

He didn’t know, and all his scars were tingling and he shoved at her, wanting to run, run, run away. He just stood there, breathing hard and hoping she’d do something, anything, to make things make sense.

She gasped, but didn’t fall or yell. The side of her mouth quirked up, and she sat down, leaning her head against the brick wall and pulling her knees to her chest. “Sometimes I miss things I can’t remember, too.”

Bruce, he thought, remembering those first hazy, aching hours after - after the grave, which can’t be - and wished he could remember why the name felt so heavy.

Like it was the biggest piece of his shattered self that he had managed to hold onto, but didn’t know what or why or how it fit into who he had been. Who he could have been. Maybe there was no Bruce and his name wasn’t Jason and really... really he didn’t exist.

Because he couldn’t have climbed out of a grave, and he couldn’t just exist without a past or a future or anything outside this eternal present.

He slumped down beside the girl, who was allowing a spider to crawl across her fingers.

He doesn’t know how he knows how to do the things he does - how he always picks the windows without alarms to smash, how he hasn’t been found by cops or the well-meaning no matter where he picks to sleep for the night, why he shares his food with the others, the ones who don’t know how to steal food and clothes - and right now he doesn’t want to know.

Except that he does. If he knew - if he had a few more pieces of his shattered past in his grasp, if he knew where his scars were from and where he’s from and what his other name had been and if he was who he thought he was, or if he wasn’t...

“Was I really dead?” he forces out, voice barely audible from -however long - of lack of use. 

He looked over, and the girl was gone. The spider idly crawled up the wall over colorful graffiti. 

Maybe she’d never been there at all.

Maybe he’d never been there at all.

Either way, his stomach was growling with hunger. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and went in search of food.

He should only focus on things that were. It was... it was best that way. Simple. 

He’d nearly forgotten the girl by the time he made his way back to his own alley. (Things only existed for as long as they stayed in his mind, anymore.)

Graves and scars and hidden names and the way the name Bruce resonated and how his brief fights in the streets felt like going home... these weren’t things he wanted to think about. 

Not now. Probably not ever.

He slept on newspapers and cardboard that night and dreamt he was safe and flying and most importantly, not alone.

He did not remember his dreams.


End file.
